Random Copyist Omissions

When dealing with manuscripts, the phenomenon of parablepsis is commonly recognized. Copyists often left out words, phrases, and even longer strings of text when their eyes accidentally skipped from one word or phrase to another with a similar sequence of letters, inadvertently omitting the intervening text. Anyone who has read standard handbooks on textual criticism in any field will be familiar with the terms parablepsis, homoioarcheton, and homoioteleuton, which are used to describe this. These errors are relatively frequent and easy to spot.

But one thing I do not recall ever reading about is the apparently random omission of words or phrases. Not all accidental omissions are obviated by clear visual triggers. Sometimes words were just missed without any apparent cause. My recent work with 4QExod-c has yielded a few good examples to look at.

5 31 (Ex 8:8)

ויצא משה ואהרן מעם̇ ^{פ̇ר̇ע֯ה} ו̇יצעק משה֯ אל יהוה^̇
 And Moses and Aaron exited from before {Pharaoh}. And Moses cried out to the LORD.

Here the scribe accidentally omitted the word Pharaoh, which was secondarily added (apparently by a second hand, according to Sanderson). There is no obvious visual cause for the omission, but the shorter text is nonsensical (the meaning "people" would not be appropriate here). The scribe simply missed the word.

32 i 7 (Ex 12:37)

ויסעו בני ישראל מרעמסס סכתה כש̇ש {א֗} מאו̇ת אלף ר̇גלי ה̇גברים  
 And the children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six {thou-} hundred thousand footmen.

Here the scribe accidentally skipped the word hundred, and began to write the following word thousand, which would put the number of Israelite footmen at 6000, rather than 600,000! This would have provided a convenient text-critical explanation of the large numbers of Exodus, except that the scribe realized his mistake and erased the א, replacing it with the correct text. If he had not done so, textual critics would have had a very hard time explaining this reading, since there are no obvious triggers for parablepsis.

37 2 (Ex ?:?)

ויבא משה ^{ואהרן אל} פרעה ולא שמע 
 So entered Moses {and Aaron to} Pharaoh, but he did not listen.

This example is difficult, because it is hard to figure out what is going on. Sanderson reconstructs the text as above, but she cannot place the fragment in any known text of Exodus. Alternatively, perhaps the first verb was וידבר he spoke? If either of these verbs is reconstructed, the primary text is left non-sensical, since it lacks not only Moses' collaborator, but also the preposition connecting Moses to Pharaoh. A secondary correction (possibly the original scribe, according to Sanderson) added both Aaron and the requisite preposition. Whatever the context of this fragment, the preserved text of the main line seems to be impossible, and yet it has no obvious visual trigger.

This is a very select group of examples, but it does prove the point that such apparently random omissions do occur. In fact, in 4QExod-c, they are nearly as common as omissions with clear visual triggers. Another possible fruitful avenue to consider could be transpositions, which are often thought to have occurred largely when a copyist accidentally skipped the first word or phrase and inserted it later. The main point to draw from this discussion is this: not every shorter reading should be preferred, even if there is no obvious visual trigger for parablepsis. Scribes sometimes made mistakes that leave no clear evidence of their cause, and we must be careful not to adopt these readings in our critical texts.

3rd University of Birmingham Biblical Studies Postgraduate Day Conference Call for Papers

On behalf of the organizing committee, I am proud to announce that we will be hosting the 3rd University of Birmingham Biblical Studies Postgraduate Day Conference on 3 July 2013 in Birmingham, UK. This conference is aimed at postgraduate researchers from across the UK. Our theme this year will be "Unity and Diversity in Text and Tradition," which promises to spark many lively discussions. We are now accepting paper proposals of no more than 300 words. Please e-mail me your paper proposals no later than 15 April 2013.

Online Greek Paleography Resource

Christian Askeland has pointed out a helpful resource for Greek paleography. PapPal has a databank of images of dated Greek papyri for help in dating undated manuscripts.

Cairo Genizah Autograph and Copy

Dotan Arad and Esther-Miriam Wagner note a letter from the Cairo Genizah by the Rabbi Joshua Maimonides which is extant in both an autograph draft form and a later scribal copy. This intriguing situation gives us an inside peek into the relationship between authorial texts and scribal copies in medieval Egyptian Jewish literature. Most of the differences attested in the two manuscripts include stylistic improvements in line with Classical Arabic norms.



"The two letters, with the final copy above (T-S 12.608) and the draft copy below (Mos.IV.85)"
from http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/Taylor-Schechter/fotm/january-2013/index.html.

Another Forgery from Turkey

Image flipped from internet news report.

Jack Sasson points out an article in a Turkish newspaper claiming that a 1900-year-old leather Torah scroll has been confiscated by police. An (upside-down) image of the manuscript from the news report shows that this dating is clearly incorrect. The main hand is clearly not anywhere near 2000 years old, and it is so unbelievably sloppy that there is no way it was copied by a skilled scribe. The "Torah" text appears to be complete nonsense, as far as I can tell, and it is certainly not from the Pentateuch. The image quality is too poor to tell what the rest of the text is surrounding the main text. I suspect it is modelled on medieval rabbinic commentaries, but based on the nonsense "Torah" text, I highly doubt it is any such thing. This manuscript appears simply to be a poor-quality forgery.

DSS Images Online!

I just found out via Jack Sasson that the Israel Antiquities Authority has now put images of all of the DSS up online for publish access here. As far as I can tell, they have most all of the manuscripts online, with each fragment/plate imaged in both visible-light and infrared spectra. The images are of a high quality, and you can easily zoom in to see great detail. I noticed 1QIsa(a) is not given, but this is not a big deal given the Israel Museum images here. Unfortunately the images at the IAA site are not given in position in a scrollable format like the Israel Museum images, but their value is still immeasurable. For the first time ever, scholars now have the complete corpus of DSS in high quality digital images easily available at their fingertips whenever they have internet access. Thank you IAA for all your hard work! It will certainly be worth the effort!

Orthodox Corruption of Scripture in L252

Working through the 11th century Greek Gospels Lectionary 252, I came across an interesting variant in John 3:9-10. In L252, Nicodemus rebukes Jesus for his ignorance of the regenerating work of the Spirit and then proceeds to instruct him with regard to his messianic role. The lectionary lacks πως δυναται ταυτα γενεσθαι; απεκριθη Ιησους και ειπεν αυτω in vv. 9-10, leaving a text that reads:

"Nicodemus answered and said to him, 'Are you the teacher of Israel, and you do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I say to you...'"

This shorter, more theologically primitive reading is clearly the initial text of the Gospel, which has been replaced throughout the entire rest of the manuscript tradition. This process of intentional supression of heterodox readings is verified within the manuscript itself by the secondary insertion of the lacking text. The original teaching of the Gospel of John is that Christ was theologically misinformed and needed to be taught by the Jewish religious leaders why he was here...

Alternatively, the text was accidentally dropped out by homoioteleuton (και ειπεν αυτω ∩ και ειπεν αυτω) in this medieval lectionary, but I doubt I could even get a single article out of that... ;)